


Eclipse

by shellalana



Category: Warframe
Genre: Angst, Comforting, Death, Gen, Loss, POV First Person, Present Tense, blood mention, decapitation mention, parental relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 21:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16104362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellalana/pseuds/shellalana
Summary: Excalibur Umbra discovers the Star-child having a nightmare.





	Eclipse

I sit in the corner, biding my time while the Star-child sleeps. I don't need such moments of respite, having spent eons in slumber. A long endless sleep that did nothing to take my rage away.

A stirring. A sound escapes the Operator, not yet a whimper. A shifting in their pod, a fluttering twitch to the brows. A dream. To what, I don’t commit any energy to pondering. Where my mind does slip is to my once-son.

_And I will name you Isaah._

_That’s a beautiful name. He’s likely to follow in your footsteps._

_Oh, I hope so. There’s no greater honour._

How could I have been so wrong?

Another stir, a groan this time. It plucks the heaviness from my chest and replaces it with curiousity. Curiousity I don’t know. The child of the Void, saved by those who had no interest outside of their self-preservation and experiments. Constructing tools to fulfill their needs, living embodiments of servitude. All pawns in their game, never knowing what the other pieces are doing until it’s too late.

Within me. The suffering I bore for millennia... the Void-touched demon understood. The meeting of our minds united our losses, their small arms embraced my troubles and whispered to me:

_Everything is going to be alright_.

I want it to be a lie. I want to drown in the fury and reduce Ballas to dust and bile. I want to hang his head from the highest Orokin tower and watch his skin wither and fade until there is nothing left but bone. To see whether they are no different in death, without their beloved Kuva to grant them new bodies. Where their souls would go without-

A muffled scream. A clenching of fingers, a twisting of the body. This is no dream. This is a nightmare. Foreign words slip from the child's lips, words I can't understand, but the emotion is not beyond my grasp. I remind myself that the Operator is still just a child and that things such as night terrors are not unusual.

I quietly rise from my knees and stand by the pod. Fever-inspired sweat dots their brow and I casually wipe it away with the backs of my fingers.

_Leave him be. He’s just having a nightmare._

_I’m to watch my son suffer, alone, with the images of his mind he can’t control?_

_To wake him now will make him weak. Let him battle this alone._

**_He is my son!_ **

My withered pale eye drifts to their clawing hands and I take one in mine. So small, barely strong enough to wield a weapon of their own. A body frail enough to be blown away by a strong wind. Yet the mind...

_Ballas did this. Not you_.

Their mind, once so innocent, forced to endure such atrocities... No wonder the Star-child understood so easily. They knew loss and what it was like to be under the watchful gaze and manipulative hands of the Orokin.

Brows slowly unknit themselves and the tiny hand squeezes mine in return. A tear peeks out of the corner of one eye.

_Isaah_.

Let me give this child now what I could not give you then.

The child sleeps. The fever fades. Their breathing is now even. My grip remains as I continue kneeling by their pod, the pale gaze of an old man watching over them, never ready to let go.

**Author's Note:**

> A one-shot that came to me after finishing The Sacrifice, especially the unique relationship between Operators and Warframes. This is my first time writing a Warframe fic, so please let me know what you think, especially in terms of keeping with the lore/canon content.


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